TiVo and Rendezvous

An anonymous reader writes "Just found this press release on the Apple web site. Time to upgrade the TiVo?" Looks way excellent. Right now I have an old iBook sitting on top of the TV, and it streams MP3s via AirPort from the server. But it would be so much better to just listen to the MP3s through the TiVo instead ... and have access to my iPhoto albums too? Sweet. But I would still want it to be wireless: Josuah writes "Alex King has set up his TiVo 2 to download its meta information over his 802.11b network, instead of the landline. He's got step-by-step instructions up." I'd probably want to use 802.11g though ... lots of data, this is.

Comments

Broadcast to other TiVos?

[nullard]

Can I broadcast whatever I want to my neighbor's TiVO? Can my neighbor watch my slideshows w/out me knowing?

This may open the door for simple pirate TV stations using 802.11, TiVos, and Macs.

Juicy!

[webword]

Throw some technology together and get some interesting integration. Surprisingly, there is no mention of iPod in the announcement. Wouldn't it be nice to have a wireless connection to your iPod and stream that way too? Walk around the house or apartment with an almost infinite selection of streamed songs from your desktop or laptop. Eliminates the need for larger and larger storage on the iPod, at least while you are in range of the transmitter.

Speaking of this idea, how many people know about the Dr. Bott iPod Connection Kit w/ FM Wireles Transmitter? Not the same thing, of course, but it still should get you thinking about other ways to extend and expand your devices. And, while I am off on a tangent here, wouldn't it be interesting to get RSS feeds on our various wireless web devices? ;-) If this is already being done, post some references here. I'd be interested to learn more about it.

Wireless TiVo is easy...

[NetJunkie]

I just did this the other night. I use a WAP11 in bridge mode to get wireless connectivity to my home theater. I just popped in a TurboNet card in the TiVo and I was set. Enabling telnet, FTP, and Web took 15 minutes.

The problem is, 802.11b is sloooooow for pulling off video. An hour of video on a TiVo may be 2.8GB. When pulling vid over wireless it takes a LONG time... I usually either do it over night or just plug in to the switch behind the HT and get it off directly.

For those wanting to do this check out TiVoApp. It's pretty much a one step vid extraction tool that'll dump anything in Now Showing to an mpeg file.

Re:Rendezvous

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Actually, and in all seriousness, it's like AppleTalk for IP. AppleTalk was great, but had problems, not the least of which being that it was proprietary. Windows networking-- Network Neighborhood and all that-- was a horrible copy of AppleTalk. Now here comes Rendezvous, which combines the ease of use and convenience of AppleTalk with the goodness of IP without having to suck.

Gonna change the world, man.

Here's just one example of why Rendezvous is cool. Safari has Rendezvous support built-in. I have a friend who works for a company that builds web applications; their apps run on Apache, and they have dozens and dozens of development servers in their lab, all with names like SVR-LAB-01-A-342 and stuff like that. Keeping track of which server is running what, and on what ports, is a nightmare. So I set him up with mod_rendezvous yesterday. Now everybody who uses Safari (which is like half the damn company already) gets a nice list of all the currently running servers on his bookmarks screen. All you have to do is pick the one you want.

I'll say it again. Rendezvous is gonna change the world.

It's an open standard

[overunderunderdone]

It won't change nothing if it's proprietary and doesn't play nice with other OS's (Windows included).

Fortunately it ISN'T PROPRIETARY! It is an open standard that is also called zeroconf. Apple has also released source code.

Why isn't there an open source package that just makes it easy to share folders/files/printers across all platforms? Like Samba, but without being a cloned MS tech?

Grab Apple's code and get working ;)

Re:MS

[Elwood P Dowd]

Find out what this Rendezvous is and copy it!

If I understand correctly, when Rendezvous was first announced, everyone said that Microsoft's Universal Plug 'n' Play (UPnP) has all the same features, is TCP/IP based, etc., and had been out for a while already. The differences that I know of are: 1) Microsoft didn't hire the ZEROCONF guy, so it's not an IETF standard 2) One additional features was a remote root hack, solved a couple of months ago. 3) I haven't heard of anyone using it. Including Microsoft Windows XP filesharing.

The key similarity is that (IIRC) Open Source. Free as in BSD-type-License.

Today's TiVo Announcements from CES:

[maggard]

• TiVo Unveils New DVR Design That Supports HDTV
• DIRECTV AND TiVo to Introduce New High-Definition
• Toshiba Creates a New DVD Domain With TiVo
• TiVo's New Home Media Option(TM) Transforms DVR Into Entertainment Center, Bringing Control and Simplicity to Home Networking

The last one is most relevant to the discussion here.

Basically for $99 one can order a TiVo SW upgrade (secured with public/private keys) to allow your TiVo to stream mp3s, jpegs (incl. ones from Corbis), be remotely administered from a personal account on TiVo's website, and get some extra promo material. One can then get the upgrade for addt'l TiVos in the household at half-price and be able to stream shows between TiVos on the same account.

All of this due in April, software for enabling the local mp3 & jpeg streaming to be available then, you can sign up to be notified when avaliable. Presumably these apps and the TiVos will use Rendezvous to find eachother.

So: Extra cost paid upfront, secured software, able to share but only with other extra-package TiVos on the same account and not with the general 'net population. Oh yeah, and LinkSys is the preferred networking hw vendor.